The Street Philosopher

by Matthew Plampin

  Boyce gasped hard, flattening himself against an outside wall, raising his watering eyes to the sky. The strength leaked from his body. He slid towards the ground. Transfer the revolver to your other hand, he instructed himself. Go back in there and bring this to its rightful conclusion. The Irish cur and his lackeys are your bitterest enemies. They know far too much. Bring this to an end.

  But he could not. The pain was simply too great. Boyce struggled to his feet and shook the pistol from his useless hand. His moustache flapping loose, the Colonel clenched his teeth and started towards the nearby skirmishers.

  It took Kitson a few seconds to realise that Boyce had gone. Taking his hands from over his head, he looked about cautiously. Styles was frozen in a thin blade of sunlight, still pointing the revolver at the empty doorway. Cracknell was half-hidden beneath a sturdy table across the room, where he had dived after the first balls had struck the outside of the parlour.

  Kitson’s only thought was flight. The Russian artillery could bring down their shelter at any moment, and Boyce was surely set to return. They had to leave right away. He assessed the bashed-in shutter. There was space enough for them to clamber through. This was an escape route.

  He gestured to Styles. ‘Quickly, this way!’

  The illustrator did not react. Instead, he turned the pistol towards Cracknell, fumbling a little as he drew back the hammer. Seeing his intention, Kitson rushed forward, grabbing at both Styles’ hands and the greasy gun they held. It leapt in their unsteady, conflicted grasp, the report smothered entirely by the bombardment. A fist-sized hole was blown in the top of the table Cracknell was sheltering under. Styles bent his arm, twisting away, curling himself up; they fell to one side, the revolver becoming lost between them.

  ‘Styles,’ Kitson shouted, ‘please, my friend—’

  He felt the pistol’s mechanism move under his fingers, and the abrupt jolt as it fired. Styles lurched violently. Kitson released the gun and backed away; and the illustrator flopped over on to his back.

  The bullet had gone in at the base of Styles’ throat, just above the collarbone. Kitson had but an instant to note the location before it became swamped in blood. He took out his bandages, pressing the entire roll hard against the wound, but it was no use. He could not staunch the flow.

  Styles looked up at him, blinking rapidly. He dropped the revolver and took hold of Kitson’s sleeve. His blue eyes were bright in his grimy, ashen face. All his confusion and misery had departed; Kitson caught a painful glimpse of the enthusiastic, innocent young artist he had met on the beach at Eupatoria only nine months previously. He was saying something, visibly straining for volume. Still pressing vainly on the bullet hole, Kitson moved in as close as he could, until the illustrator’s beard scratched against his ear.

  Styles’ voice was choked, the words wavering on his grey lips. ‘My–my work, Thomas …’

  ‘Be still, Robert,’ Kitson instructed. ‘Do not move. All will be well.’

  ‘My work, see that it …’

  This was all he could manage. His eyes went dull and the hand slid back to his side.

  Kitson sat back numbly and stared at it all, at the man he had killed, at the blood that soaked his clothes and ran away thickly between the stones of the floor, surrounding them both with a dark lattice of lengthening lines. The smell of it seemed to reach down through his mouth and nostrils to his innermost being, coating him, staining him indelibly with its sticky, nauseating warmth. He threw down the bandages in despair and looked across the parlour. Cracknell was on his hands and knees beneath the table, an oddly incongruous, comical pose. He was regarding Kitson and Styles fixedly, his expression unreadable.

  There was a single moment of silence and stillness; and then round-shot tore into the squat structure around them, punching through it as if it were made from cardboard. Supporting beams gave out, releasing an avalanche of bricks; walls collapsed; cornerstones cracked and shattered. Then another ball hit, and the ruined townhouse fell in on itself.

  Manchester

  June 1857

  1

  Charles Norton walked up the steps of the Exchange with his managers arrayed around him. They strode between the building’s massy columns, through its grand doors and on towards the main Exchange room, at the steady pace of businessmen with deals to make. Usually, it brought the proprietor of the Norton Foundry enormous satisfaction to enter this cavernous chamber in such a manner. As he stepped on to the floor, the long rows of fluted pillars stretching away on either side of him and the great glass dome gleaming up above, he would feel like a senator in ancient Rome, or a lord taking his place in some exalted feudal hall. Today, however, was different.

  The vast crowd gathered there was quiet to the point of taciturnity. This was quite normal; there was never any vacant gossiping or laughter in the Exchange. The room echoed with hushed murmuring as laconic phrases passed back and forth, accompanied by winks, nods and a range of other coded gestures. This was the sound of Manchester’s best minds doing the business that had made their city so prosperous. These men were Norton’s brothers-in-industry, his own kind–but today he was deeply wary of them. Gathering his nerve, he kept walking until he stood in the very centre of the room, in the disc of weak sunlight that was projected down through the dome.

  Slowly, the Exchange noticed Norton’s arrival, and a change of feeling swept through the crowd. Every eye turned towards him. Could this be a show of respect, he wondered with momentary hope; could his fears be entirely without foundation?

  He soon saw that this was not the case. The looks directed at him were positively unpleasant–snide smirks and leers, and even the occasional glare of censure, as if he was complicit in some terrible crime. Agents and exchange clerks started to mutter behind their hands and pocketbooks, the bolder and more malicious among them pronouncing certain words with a purposeful loudness, intending that he should hear. Sodomite, they hissed; bugger-boy.

  After a few minutes of this, the Foundry managers excused themselves uncomfortably and left the building. Charles knew straight away against whom these foul accusations were being levelled. Full of helpless, indignant anger, he resolved to face these scoundrels down, to show them that as well as being obscene and ungodly, what they claimed was groundless slander. But it soon became clear that no matter how much resilience he displayed, no one would do business with the Norton Foundry that day. Backs were turned and noses were lifted; even William Fairbairn, whose acclaimed floating mill and bakery could not have been realised without his assistance, would not even speak to him. In the space of two short days, it seemed, he had become an outcast. Enraged, bewildered and humiliated, he departed to a mounting chorus of low jeers.

  Out in St Anne’s Square, Charles fired a curt ‘home’ at the coachman before throwing himself into his carriage. As it rolled off, he took the shining top hat from his head and dashed it to the floor. Sitting back, trying to regain his calm, he sifted through the events of the past thirty-six hours once again.

  Mr Twelves had failed to appear on Saturday night, either with Bill and Jemima or without. The coach-and-four had returned bearing but a single passenger: his daughter, in a state of intense anger. Something had plainly taken place that evening, but she would not reveal what it was, no matter how voluble and furious his demands. She would not even look him in the eye, in fact, and had swept upstairs to her rooms with barely a word. Forcing himself to be patient, he had retired vowing to hold his peace and see what the following day would bring. Bill spending a night away from Norton Hall was hardly unusual, after all. There could be any number of explanations for this turn of events.

  Then, the very first thing on Sunday morning, before Charles had even dressed for church, a note had arrived from Mr Twelves terminating their contract with immediate effect. Charles had not known what to make of this. Twelves was not a man easily upset. As he had gone about the observances of the Sabbath, Charles had grown increasingly convinced that he had been outfoxed somehow. Terr
ible suspicions began to gather in his mind. What might the fiend Cracknell and that damned street philosopher have told his disloyal children? He had prepared himself for a tempestuous confrontation. Neither, however, had appeared; Bill did not return from the city. Jemima did not so much as open her door, refusing even to admit her maid. Charles had dined alone, and went to bed severely disquieted.

  He could never have dreamed, however, that the new day would bring such a staggering development. It was beyond his ability even to contemplate. There simply could not be any truth in it. Charles Norton stared numbly at his boots, his head nodding with the motion of the carriage.

  The next he knew, they were pulling up in front of Norton Hall. Stepping on to the gravel, he noticed that the front door had not been opened to admit him. He walked over slowly; still it remained firmly, obstinately shut.

  ‘Where the deuce is that butler?’ he muttered under his breath, rapping on the stained glass panel set into the door with the end of his cane.

  Eventually, the door was opened by a stammering, scarlet-cheeked parlour-maid, who revealed that the butler had resigned his post and left for the city. Charles, doing his best to hide his dismay, soon discovered that a number of the other servants had also abandoned his household. And what was more, Jemima had still not emerged from her chambers. He decided that this had gone on for quite long enough. Storming upstairs, he hammered on her door, demanding to be admitted. When this did not elicit a response, he strode back to the landing rail and took a deep breath. Then he charged shoulder first.

  The lock was a delicate one, designed for the purposes of privacy rather than to serve as a barrier against determined assailants, and it broke with a loud crack. The sitting-room door flew inwards, depositing Charles Norton on the carpet. Jemima considered her father coldly from behind her writing desk. They got to their feet at the same time, one with rather more poise than the other.

  ‘Jemima, explain yourself!’ he shouted as soon as he was upright again–quite neglecting, in his fury, to straighten his skewed necktie. ‘Tell me what happened at the Belle Vue, this instant!’

  ‘Surely you know,’ she replied. ‘Have your black-suited men not reported back to you?’

  He pointed at her. ‘Don’t you cheek me, my girl, or I swear—’

  ‘You tried to trap us. You tried to trap your own children.’

  Charles rolled his eyes at this. ‘I had to, don’t you see? Where is your brother?’

  Jemima glared at him. She had been determined to preserve her self-control should this encounter occur, but it was slipping away nonetheless. ‘He will have left the country by now. I don’t know his destination. Your spies uncovered a little more than they were expecting.’ She recalled the scrawled note left on the seat of the coach-and-four, waiting for her when she came to depart the Belle Vue. Don’t know what we’ll do, it had said. Damn him for this! My life in Manchester is quite finished! Keane says America, and I’m inclined to agree. Leave too, Jem, for God’s sake! Leave while you are still able!

  Her father was aghast at this revelation, but he quickly recovered his sense of moral superiority. ‘They were a necessary evil. You were consorting with my enemies, Jemima!’

  ‘You mean with those who actually know the truth about you, about your marvellous success out in the Crimea–your railway spikes, your wretched buckles!’

  Charles crossed his hands in front of him and looked at her severely; he had already guessed that these matters were involved. ‘You speak of things that are beyond your capacity to understand. I’ll thank you, however, not to take the word of strangers over that of your own father. We are bound by blood, and I will not have you—’

  ‘Tell me that you did not know of the murders,’ Jemima broke in with forceful impatience. ‘Tell me that you did not know what your friend Nathaniel Boyce had done to acquire that panel when you agreed to smuggle it back.’

  This caught him unawares. He stared out of the window, brow furrowed, refusing to answer.

  ‘Very well then, Father, tell me that you did not leave Anthony in Balaclava whilst you were off making your deals. The risks of that place were well known. You were responsible for him–he was there to assist you. But you went up to the plateau with your murderous friend and you left him. Is that not so?’

  Charles was silent for another tense half-minute, his face turning brick red; then he burst into speech. ‘How could I have possibly known, Jemima? How do you expect me to have—’

  He stopped, suddenly running out of words. His attempt at righteous, indignant wrath was undercut entirely by the guilt in his voice. Turning away from his daughter with a heated exclamation, he marched from the room and thundered down the stairs.

  Jemima sat again, putting a hand to her aching forehead. Wiping away an unexpected tear, she glanced at the valise that sat packed and ready in her bedroom, and then up at the clock on the wall. There were still several hours to go.

  2

  Boyce made a quick survey of the cobbled stable-yard at the rear of the Albion Hotel. Most of those employed there were engaged in the preparation of a large, imperial blue barouche for an afternoon drive; rather optimistically, in Boyce’s view, as the heavy clouds gathering overhead held a clear threat of rain. Striding swiftly past this vehicle, he headed for the stall closest to the gate–the meeting place proposed in the anonymous note left for him that morning at the Albion’s front desk. Seeing him pass, a fat-faced fool he supposed must be the head groom called out an impertinent salutation, whilst doffing a cheap-looking cap. Boyce ignored him.

  The stall contained a single, aged grey. There were no stable-hands within earshot. Boyce stood stiffly beside it, taking a cigar from his coatee to create the appearance of a gentleman soldier who had merely stepped outside for a quiet, solitary smoke. He did not have long. There was a call he had to make, for the sake of form; and then he was due to dine with a group of prominent noblemen, all keen collectors of Raphael, in town for the Queen’s visit to the Art Treasures Exhibition.

  ‘Are you there?’ He hissed this through gritted teeth, looking straight ahead rather than into the stall, so that anyone watching from a distance would not be able to tell that he was addressing someone.

  ‘That I am, sir,’ replied a voice from inside. ‘May I come out, d’ye think? I don’t know what they’ve been feeding this poor beast, but by God, even Hercules himself would balk at sweeping up this stinking mess.’

  ‘You stay where you bloody well are. I will not risk anyone seeing us together, do you understand?’ Boyce fingered the unlit cigar. Since the loss of his hand, lighting the damn things was something of a challenge. At that moment, he could not chance an error, a spillage of matches perhaps, that would inevitably prompt some idiot to rush over and proffer his assistance.

  A soft chuckle came from the stall. ‘No need for such a tone, Brigadier.’ The speaker moved forward from the shadows, placing a large hand on the old grey’s neck. Boyce glanced over to make an assessment. He was a typical example of his kind: badly dressed and groomed, tall but with a swaggering, stooping posture that marked him out as an irredeemable degenerate. The faintest touch of a smirk lingered on his square, low-born face. It was plain that this wretched fellow considered himself something of a buck. ‘I am a professional, afore all else. No one will see me.’ There was a portentous pause. ‘Twelves is my name.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn what your name is, knave. What was the meaning of that note? Explain yourself, this instant.’

  Twelves seemed to be deriving some insolent amusement from Boyce’s assertive manner. ‘My meaning is simple. I have information on your enemies. My men and I have been watching them these past few weeks, and we could be useful to ye. Useful indeed.’

  ‘So you discovered my … acquaintance with Norton.’

  Twelves looked away. ‘Not too difficult, Brigadier, if I may say.’

  Boyce thought for a moment. The situation was becoming ever more pressing. The Queen would be in Manchester the
very next day. It was unbelievable that Norton had failed to deal with this. The man was a fool, and they’d both paid a heavy price for his ineffectiveness. Their connection would have to be severed. The scandal of Norton’s sodomite offspring was certain to ruin the Foundry. Boyce was confident that none of this disgrace would ever touch him personally; Norton could not reveal anything about their deal, about the Pilate, without incriminating himself as well. But it was a vexatious blow all the same.

  ‘What do you know?’ Boyce asked.

  ‘Thomas Kitson’s address, for starters. A tenement on Princess Street, not a quarter-mile from this very spot. We’ve kept a close watch on it. I don’t doubt that there will soon be contact between ’im and Mr Cracknell.’ Twelves cleared his throat. ‘If ye were to provide the necessary payment, we’d be happy to follow ’em, see what they’re up to. Or we could—’

  ‘Kill them,’ Boyce instructed. ‘Kill them both, tonight. This has to end. I need not remind you that Richard Cracknell has proved tiresomely resourceful. There will be no more mishaps or unwelcome surprises.’

  ‘Ye have my word on that.’ The investigator scowled. ‘It would be hard to imagine another interruption as abhorrent as the unnatural filth my men and I witnessed in the Belle Vue.’ He shook his head. ‘Can’t have any link with such deviancy in my line of work. Does untold damage to a man’s reputation–and reputation, Brigadier, is all. Shall I assume that ye are also out of whatever arrangement ye might have had with that wretched family, sir?’